so what's up with kris and roses
like it's made pretty plain and clear in chapter 5 that roses represent romantic love in deltarune
and this is evident in chapter 4 as well, when asgore tries to uhhh, 'flirt' with toriel using a bouquet of pink roses (separate from red roses, which are what asgore gives rudy and what the weird route rose color was)
when his romantic gesture fails, he offloads them onto kris.
(while also winking about sharing them with susie...?
he does this again in chapter 5, mind you.
what could this ever mean.)
anyway, back to chapter 4, but for some totally inexplicable reason, kris hands susie the pink rose upside down. my personal read of this is that kris is a florist's kid and knows that pink roses are romantic, so they're holding it upside down to downplay that aspect of it. you could also read it as them suppressing their crush since the flower is obscured when upside down (or something)
and then this specific pink rose comes back in chapter 5 under an extremely romantic context of 'what flower would susie give to noelle as a remembrance of their love'.
and uh, sorry to kris, but their flower gift to susie becomes susie's flower gift for noelle. oops!
i actually have soooo much to say about this scene, but i'll leave that for another day, because the thing i'm trying to get at is that while roses mean romantic love in general, pink roses in particular mean romantic love to kris because it reminds them of susie whoa who said that.
let's take a look at their colored titles this chapter.
'blue rose' is their default title and people have talked about it to death, but blue roses do not exist in nature. they are artificial and man-made (and wow what could that mean for kris). they also represent unrequited love as a result.
but then they change from the 'blue rose' to the 'pink rose' (a rose that DOES exist irl) after a battle with pink that's basically all about the soul's wants vs kris's wants. and uh, the kris analogue wants to have a high school romance and walk home with their crush on a date and eat sand at the beach together.
it's not even implied at this point, like come on :sob:
and it also has lots and lots and lots of flirting. and susie's big flirt act is sharing food wow hmmmmmmmm....
and you know what else changes from blue to pink after flirting? hold onto your horses for some PREMIUM delulu:
susie turned kris pink theory /s
or more in-line with the above:
kris' love turns them from an artificial man-made creation (blue rose) to a real one (pink rose)
anyway, all this is to say that kris has love on the mind throughout the dark world and kris themself is the very rose of romantic love, especially when they become the pink rose which may or may not symbolize their crush on susie.
and kris being a rose of romantic love brings to mind two very specific roses to me:
the pink rose in the disney's beauty and the beast (susie is called the beast many many times in deltarune. this wonderful post by tanoshiboo covers it in depth)
and the rose from the little prince (the words 'taming/tamed' come up a lot with kris and susie)
both of these roses also live inside glass domes to protect them and both the main characters of these stories must learn what love is in order to appreciate the rose, perhaps much like susie the girl who will know the true meaning of love
and there's something to be said about kris being a rose in these stories, because roses lack agency. they're often representing something else and that feels very much like kris to me: defined by their 'being' aka cage with human parts and soul, rather than their 'doing' aka their choices and ours.
similarly, while kris talks to the flowers, they only look at the roses.
perhaps in admission of love being something they can't want or wish for, perhaps in admission that they are a rose themself with both love and thorns.
and perhaps just as susie's every step echoes with noelle, so too are kris' steps marked by love, just as the whole dark world is steeped in it.
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